"Hey…is
that Molly?" questioned Andrew as he twirled a dreadlocked hair
around his straw. He pointed his empty King's Kup at an ant-like
figure wrapped in orange emerged from a taxi below.

I
squinted. Everything was a blurry mass of a disturbed artist's
painting. I reached for my coke-bottle lenses at the top of my frizzy
brown head and shoved them onto my face. The image snapped into place
and I saw Molly, limping out of a taxi, which was folded around the
back of a blue Prius, and invading the space of a rather
imposing-looking giantess of a woman. Molly had never been afraid of
confrontation.

"Cripes,
you need to stop forgetting your contacts, Lola." Carrie grinned
and sucked down the last of her slushie. Her wavy blonde hair, I
noticed, kept whipping in front of her eyes, as though shielding her
vision from reality. She solved this problem with the procuring of a
hair band and a hastily-tied bun. "Those things belong on the
Hubble telescope."

I
gave her a shove and focused on the scene below, peering over the
brick wall. Molly's cab driver was frantically gesturing to a
weary-looking police officer , who probably wanted to go home to his
wife, dog and three kids. The large woman was pointing at her vehicle
and calmly reaching for her insurance card. Though it looked as
though the accident had been the cab driver's fault, the tiny Molly
was yelling and carrying on as though the woman had hit her at a red
light going 80 miles an hour. Given the opportunity, Molly would yell
her way out of a tinfoil hat.

Ryan
shrugged and began collecting the King's Kups to throw in the
landfill below. "At least she's confident enough with herself to
wear them out in public. What about you, Ms. Headgear and Facial
Mask?" he inquired of Carrie as she stuck out her tongue, which was
blue from sugary slushie.

Molly
had finished dealing with the police officer and, shrugging off the
paramedics, she began to struggle up the stairs to King's Korner
Pizza Palace. Fortunately, we were on break, so she wasn't in
trouble for being late to her shift and we were there to help her
overconfident self up to the restaurant.

Andrew
and I ran to the staircase to help her up and gingerly took hold of
the part of her arms covered by her long-sleeved orange sweater. Had
we directly touched her skin, the flesh on our hands would begin to
bubble and fill with craters of blood. Still, her sleeves felt like
hot plates, and I found myself grimacing. Andrew was nearly crying as
she supported most of her weight on his huge arm.

"God,
Molly, did you get attacked by a dingo on the way here?" asked
Matt, his blue eyes questioning. We were never sure whether or not
Matt was teasing or truly asking a question. He was one of those
hard-to-read people that are either masters of sarcasm or the dimmest
of bulbs.

We
plopped Molly down between Ryan and Carrie. Her red-eyed glare, meant
for Matt, provoked enough fear for them to quietly inch away. Matt,
wishing to redeem himself, ran inside the pizza place and reappeared
with the first aid kit we kept underneath the register for times such
as these. He had also, resourcefully, brought both oven mitts in
order to carefully apply the ace wrap to Molly's swollen ankle.

I
knelt behind Molly and slowly brushed through her strong, copper hair
with my fingers and began to braid it. This activity always seemed to
soothe her, and her body temperature cooled to steaming as Carrie
thoughtfully provided her with a King's Kup-sized cherry slushie.

"Sweetheart…did
you take your medicine this morning?" I asked quietly as I willed
the rebellious strands to tuck into the braid.

She
twisted to stare up at me. "Yes. You know damn well I never forget
my meds, or my doctor would shank me." I quickly put a hand over
her mouth, giggling with her, then immediately removed it with the
smell of a grilled palm. I assessed the damage. Good, only slightly
red.

Her
smile dissolved into her face and she averted my gaze, staring at her
newly swaddled ankle. "Whatever. It's not like those little green
pills are actually improving my ability to interact with human
beings." The cabbie, policeman, and the woman (whose name happened
to be, according to Molly, Marianne Flederson), had given up
gesticulating and were now instructing the newly arrived tow truck.

"Actually,
they do," stated Matt, removing the oven mitts. "Not bursting
into flame is widely regarded as an improvement for any social
situation." Oh, the social graces of young Matthew…

The
red eyes once more focused on their target and Molly began to shake
violently. I immediately released my hold on her hair and silently
signaled the others to back away. Then I heard the hiss of steam and
realized that tears were trickling down her face as far as they could
without evaporating, and her tired, red eyes had faded to orange.

This
all felt so wrong.

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